Chais > Chais's Quotes

“In his classic The Outermost House, American naturalist Henry Beston writes that animals “are not brethren, they are not underlings” but beings “gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear.” They are, he writes, “other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.”
― Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness

“Hold your hands out over the earth as over a flame. To all who love her, who open to her the doors of their veins, she gives of her strength, sustaining them with her own measureless tremor of dark life. Touch the earth, love the earth, honour the earth, her plains, her valleys, her hills, and her seas; rest your spirit in her solitary places. For the gifts of life are the earth’s and they are given to all, and they are the songs of birds at daybreak, Orion and the Bear, and dawn seen over ocean from the beach.”
― Henry Beston, The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod

“The Buddha denied the existence of persisting selves. At the end of life, the self may dissolve into eternity like salt in the ocean. To some, this might seem distressing. But to lose the lonely self in the ocean of eternity could also be a release, an enlightenment, as the mystics promise.”
― Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness